“I think the take away is that Darwin is not someone to be idolized.”
You are gifted in undertstatement! You may wish to temper the message, but it was quite clear - study/belief in evolution means you are Hitler. Study of science means the preaching the merits hatred and genocide.
This is why the fundamentalist agenda will never achieve political power outside of places like Afghanistan. Most fundmentalists/creationists are not as reasoned as you (though you fall short on calling out your fellow creation believers on their over-the-top rhetoric on this thread, so you seem, if I may be direct, a tad disingenuous)
Science is not faith, it never was, but that is the argument fundamentalists/creationists must have in order to create a “holy war” mentality amongst themselves.
Fundamentalists/creationists have to define a broad category of science as “Darwinism”. They have to elevate Darwin to false-idol status when science does no such thing.
The fundamentalists/creationists have to fight the non-existent philosophical fight with the dissembling that is evident by the most profligate creationist posters on this and the many other threads, and that is that ALL believers in science are Hilterian Stalinists that do not value life, except for the scientific artifacts it provides - and that they are all atheist and materialists.
It’s the Big Lie of creationism that must be preached at the exclusion of everything else. Within this framework a fundamentalist scientist cannot exists. A Christian Engineer is a contradiction.
So, thank you for attempting to portray an all-too-rare reasoned creationist view that admits that science isn’t evil. I think that was your point.
I apologize if I am too tough on you in this post, but the Big Creationist Lie, BCL, if you will, is alive and well on this and the many threads on the subject. It is shockingly Talibanesque.
“Most fundmentalists/creationists are not as reasoned as you”
should be “Most fundmentalists/creationists ON THIS BOARD are not as reasoned as you”
Most fundamentalists I know, aren’t subscribers to the BCL.
Evoloserism is not science and Chuck Darwin was not a scientist. Evolution is a brain-dead ideological doctrine which has brought about two world wars and two political doctrines which are responsible for tens of millions of unnecessary human deaths. The doctrine itself is so far from rational thought and has been disproven so many times and so many ways that nobody with brains or talent is defending it any longer; it's being defended by academic dead wood and losers.
“I apologize if I am too tough on you in this post, but the Big Creationist Lie, BCL, if you will, is alive and well on this and the many threads on the subject. It is shockingly Talibanesque.” [excerpt, emphasis mine]If Creationism is a lie, then all your rights are granted to you by your government, who may rescind them if they wish.
Being dogmatic about a religious beleif does not neccesarily make one like the Taliban.
Consider these two doctrines:
1) "God commands you to love you neighbor as yourself"
2) "God commands you to kill unbelieving neighbors".
Now I would have to think that you would have an interest in which doctrine your neighbor was dogmatic about?
It seems to me a bit slanderous to lump Christianity with Islam. The founder of Islam promoted the example of military force to make people convert. The founder of Christianity did no such thing. No doubt various dispicable acts such as the Spanish Inqusition now spring to your mind. But consider how much they were poor examples of Christianity. If you care to call the instigators of these horrors Christians (I don't) you should at least admit that if anything...they were not fundamental enough...but rather were quite the apostates to what Jesus taught.
So the problem is not fundamentalism, the problem is what one is fundamental about.
The people annoying you seem to be those who would like to turn the Bible into a science book. It isn't. It is much more important. But it has nothing to do with the kind of punishment you would have coming to you for blasphemy under the Taliban.
Oh, and yes--just to nit pick--science actually does require faith. As just about all knolledge does. Heck about the only thing one can be sure about is one's own existence as a soul. Even the existence our bodies and the rest of the natural world must be accepted on our faith in the veracity of our senses.
Put another way, the scientific method seems reasonable to my mind, and I presume yours as well. But suppose our reasoning is not valid. How else can we know that the scientific method is valid? We must have faith in our reasoning, or at the least on the authority of some other person (whose reason we trust more than our on) that the scientific method is a valid approach to discovering truth. As for me, I think its only really useful for things in the natural world which we have the power to conduct controlled experiments on...and that kind of leaves any transcendent willful beings like God out of the petri dish.